Northern Ireland’s police watchdog says it is “fortunate no one was killed” when mistakes by the PSNI led to a failure to identify and warn the targets of an imminent bomb attack.

The Police Ombudsman recommended three officers be disciplined in the wake of the incident. He says the bomb failed to go off and was found about an hour after police received information about the impending attack which happened in 2014.

Ombudsman investigators found that after receiving the call, “police failed to make proper enquiries, identified the wrong target and location and warned the wrong person”.

The device was defused and was later confirmed to have been viable.

Police Ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, said the outcome of the incident could have very much more serious”.

He added: “The targets of this attack were, in effect, failed by the police. I have recommended that police put in place, as a matter of urgency, measures to prevent a recurrence.”

The Ombudsman would not release details of the location of the bomb attack. They said it was targets plural, but one attack.

The watchdog says that a warning phone call was received by an “external organisation which then tried to contact police through established channels”.

But the external organisation was unable to get through and the call was instead transferred to a lower ranking officer. He made enquiries to identify the intended target and location for the attack, but Dr Maguire says an examination of police records and computer systems showed that these enquiries had been “inadequate”.

As a result, the wrong target and location was identified and “inaccurate information” was passed to a police Duty Inspector.

When interviewed, the Ombudsman says, the officer “fully accepted that he had made errors while researching the phone call”.

The investigation also established that the designated police phone number called by the external organisation had been temporarily unmanned at the time of the call.

Two supervisory officers later admitted that they had had failed to arrange proper cover to ensure the phone would be answered.

Dr Maguire added: “To prevent a recurrence, I have recommended that police put in place measures to ensure such calls are always answered immediately and dealt with appropriately.”

He recommended that the three officers involved be disciplined. The Ombudsman statement added that “they have each received disciplinary sanctions - although those imposed by the PSNI on the supervisory officers were at a lower level than that recommended by the Police Ombudsman”.